Just a word of warning before I start this post. It might get a little dark and I may have told at least some of this story at some point in time. But I feel like I should share it again.

I just finished reading Francis Chan’s book Forgotten God. It’s a great book about the Holy Spirit.

While reading it I started remembering a certain time in my life and how, I now believe, the Holy Spirit gave me a vision that has helped keep me going all these years since then. I’ve also felt compelled to share this story here and now.

Most of you have probably heard me talk about my struggle with depression. Some might even say that I talk about it too much. But it has been one of the biggest defining this of my life so far, and I believe that God has called me to share what I’ve been through that it might help someone else.

The story I want to tell today starts on September 14th, 1999. I was in my freshman year at South Dakota State University. Most people don’t even know that I went there for a little while before going to MidAmerica Nazarene University.

I chose to go there for some not really good reasons.

I just wanted to get away from home and had heard that SDSU was a pretty good party school. I wanted to go there and be the stereotypical college kid in movies. I thought it would be parties and drinking and anything else I could get my hands onto.

But I got there and quickly found out that things aren’t always like the movies.

I was completely out of place.

Had no friends.

I found myself drowning in people and wanting to let myself drown.

I was already pretty low before going to SDSU, so I don’t want you to think that was the reason for my downward spiral. It just pushed me down even further.

For the first time I felt completely alone and helpless.

I didn’t want to go on anymore nor did I think that I could.

I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about any of this either. Which I can see now was probably mostly due to the depression isolating me more than nobody being there.

So, as I was laying in bed on Sept. 14th, I was listening to music loudly on my headphones, which was the only way I could get the voices in my head to be quiet long enough for me to go to sleep.

I looked up at the clock as it turned to midnight.

It was now the 15th.

My 19th birthday.

I didn’t feel like living anymore.

As I lay there crying in my bed as quietly as I could, so as not to disturb my roommate, whom I had only know for a couple weeks, two images flashed before my eyes.

Two images of me laying on the floor of my dorm room dead.

Not to get too graphic, but in one I had slit my wrists and the other my throat.

I lay there for a while just absorbing those images and still crying.

This next part is going to sound pretty corny, but it is truly the way it happened.

I had put the Bon Jovi CD Crossroad into my discman to listen to while trying to sleep.

While I was absorbing these images the song “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” came on.

It’s a song about being down but not out. That you may be in a bad place now, but someday you will be something bigger than what you are. I let you search for it if you want.

But as this song was playing it was like I heard a voice say, “I’m not done with you yet. Don’t give up. I’m here and I love you.”

I can’t say that my life completely changed in that moment. But I can tell you that those images have stuck with me over the last 16 years, and the voice that spoke to me that night has been with me the whole time.

The 3 months or so that I was at SDSU were some of the darkest of my life. But I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

I still feel down at times, and it’s hard to keep going some days.

But I know that God isn’t finished with me yet, and that He loves me and will never leave me.

And because of that, I keep going and try to spread my story to help other people know that they aren’t alone.

A few weeks ago our Pastor Jason played this video for us as we started a series looking deeper at the Bible.

My first thought when the video started was that it looked remarkably like what you see in our country on Black Friday. These people obviously longed to have whatever was in those suitcases.

Then I realized that they were diving into this pile for Bibles in their language.

It made me realize just how much we as Western Christians take for granted having Bibles around. In fact I have a whole shelf of Bibles that I’ve collected over the years. But I can’t tell you the last time I actually opened one of them.

Part of this has to do with now having the Bible App on my phone and so I have the Bible with me every where I go.

But still, I’ve got a shelf full of Bibles that are just collecting dust, and there are people who would die to have just one in their language to read.

It also brought to mind a story for a few years back when I worked at Borders in Kansas.

A young man and woman walked up to me and asked politely if we had the Koran.

So I took them over to the religion section and showed him where the few that we kept in stock were.

I was amazed at what he did next.

He pulled one off the shelf and quietly said a prayer and kiss the cover of the Koran.

I stood there shocked for a moment, then after making sure he didn’t need more help I went back to whatever I was doing.

But I kept going over what I had just seen in my mind.

This man said a prayer and kiss the Koran before even opening it.

I don’t know that I’ve ever shown that kind of reverence towards the Bible.

It hurt me to think of this, because when I see how much others care about the Bible or the Koran, it just brings to light how little respect I show to the gift that God has given me.

Like most times I don’t really have any answers or ways to make this better.

But maybe now instead of just pulling the Bible up on my phone, I’ll actually take one off the shelf. Dust it off. Say a prayer that God would speak to me through His words. Open it up and read it.

So, this may not seem like the normal topics that I talk about at first. But I think it will get there in the end.

As I’m sure all of you know, this Friday some little movie opened up called Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Now, I haven’t seen it yet, so don’t worry about any spoilers for Episode VII.

I was sitting at home Thursday night in the middle of the night while the whole nation, it seemed was out watching this movie, because my beautiful daughter has decided to switch her sleep schedule again.

While I was sitting there watching something, I realized that I owned all six of the other movies, I haven’t watched them in a very long time.

So, I set about the mission of watching all six of them in the course of the next 24 hours. Starting with Episode I and going through Episode VI.

I’ve never done this before.

Now on the other side of this marathon I can tell you I really think this is the best way to watch these movies.

A lot of you might argue that this is not the way to watch them. That you should only watch the original ones and forget about the newer, “inferior” ones.

I’ve probably always been in the minority on this, but I actually do like the newer ones. They’re not as great as the others, but they are still great movies that tell an amazing story.

I didn’t start this post to write out all of the reasons that I think they actually do work, so I won’t go into that here. Maybe another time.

While I was watching them though, I saw such an amazing parallel between Anakin’s story and Luke’s story.

They were both emotional and somewhat bratty teens, who through a series of unfortunate events have been handed some of the worst luck imaginable.

Through their journey the each are faced with the same choice.

Give in to their anger and emotions and join the Dark Side.

Or keep there emotions in check and choose to be a Jedi.

I believe this is a decision that almost all of us have faced at some time in our lives. I know for sure I have, and that I haven’t always chosen the right side.

The only real difference between father and son is that Luke chooses to believe and to not give in to the Dark Side.

Life is full of these choices, and we must be ready to choose the right side.

I thought that was going to be the overall theme for me coming out of watching all of these movies.

But than at the end of Episode VI, Vader asks Luke to take off his mask so he can, for once in his life look on his own son with his own eyes.

As the mask comes off, I realized that behind this “evil” man, was just a man.

When it came down to it, Vader choose to kill his mentor, not just because Luke was his son. But also, because Luke choose to see the human being behind the mask and believe that there was still some good in him.

It made me wonder, if we stopped looking at the mask of our enemies (the thing that we don’t agree with them about), and looked at the person behind it, would there still be such a thing as an enemy?